AWS CloudWatch¶

Creating read-only AWS credentials¶

Before you start using the integration, we recommend setting up a new read-only AWS user.

Step 1. Login to AWS IAM Management Console

Step 2. Create a New User

1. Select ‘Generate Access Token for each user’
2. Download CSV of credentials

Step 3. View details of New User created.

1. Under Permission select the Inline Policy dropdown creation link
2. Select Custom Policy
3. Paste the below custom policy

(If you’re not using a service, feel free to omit it):

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics",
        "cloudwatch:ListMetrics",
        "dynamodb:ListTables",
        "ec2:DescribeInstances",
        "ec2:DescribeVolumes",
        "ec2:DescribeVpnConnections",
        "ecs:ListClusters",
        "ecs:DescribeClusters",
        "elasticache:describeCacheClusters",
        "elasticbeanstalk:DescribeEnvironments",
        "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancers",
        "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTags",
        "elasticmapreduce:ListClusters",
        "rds:DescribeDBInstances",
        "rds:DescribeDBClusters",
        "ses:GetSendQuota",
        "ses:GetSendStatistics",
        "sqs:ListQueues",
        "lambda:ListFunctions"
     ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

You can then add your User to a Group and generate an Access Key for the user (or use the Access Key generated when you created the User) to use in the Librato AWS integration.

Importing your CloudWatch metrics to Librato.¶

Prerequisite to start using this integration is that you have a Librato account. If you do not already have one, sign up for a free trial - it only requires an email address.

After you sign in to your Librato account, you will see a welcome screen that will guide you through the process of setting up your CloudWatch integration.

Select the “Amazon Web Services” option and proceed to the next step. After providing a title for your new integration you will be prompted to enter the read-only AWS Access Key ID and Secret Access Key you created earlier. Select an AWS Region and check the AWS Services you’re interested in tracking.

You can import metrics from as many instances as you want but as a precautionary measure we have set a limit to 250 instances. If you want that limit removed just send us an email to technicalsupport@solarwinds.com.

Curated AWS Spaces¶

Once your credentials are set up and saved, you can navigate to the Spaces list and see the AWS workspaces we have automatically created for each service. They are easily distinguishable by their “AWS-orange” color.

Curated Spaces are intended to give you a starting point to easily view AWS service specific metrics. The tag bar shows the standard, AWS provided tags such as name, instanceid, instancetype, az, region, etc. for EC2.

The Spaces are created as templates using the dynamic tags feature. Within the tag bar you can filter or group on tags which will render the corresponding metric streams on your charts.

To see custom tags, or to customize charts, you need to create a custom workspace.

Custom Tags and Custom Spaces¶

If you have added custom tags to your AWS metrics and want to use them in the Librato app, you need to create a custom Space. You can either start from scratch by creating a new Space or you can copy one of the curated AWS Spaces (see Copy Spaces). You will notice that the header bar is now blue, indicating that the Space is custom and therefore editable.

If you double-click on one of the charts, and click on the tag symbol to the right of a metric stream row, you will see the custom tags you created within AWS. Click on the custom tags and they will appear in the tag bar at the top of the screen.

Filtering Metrics¶

Librato supports the ability to filter by tag for EBS and EC2 resources. In the Cloudwatch integration, the EBS and EC2 service types have an additional input option next to each service type (when checked). This input is a toggle for two states: all or filtered.

The default state is all, which is to collect all resource metrics from CloudWatch for the respective service type. If you click on the link it will toggle to filtered; in this state we white-list metrics coming from resources with the following tag applied:

librato:import=true

… where librato:import is the key and true is the value. For example, if you are using the EC2 command line tool you would apply the tag to an instance like:

ec2tag <instance id> -t librato:import=true

Or in the AWS Console:

Stop Importing CloudWatch Metrics¶

To stop importing CloudWatch metrics, either hit the delete button to remove your IAM credentials or un-check the AWS Regions and AWS Services boxes and save.

After Setup Is Complete¶

After you have completed your setup, you should start seeing metrics flow into your account within 10-15 minutes. If that is not the case, check the Integrations page for any errors that may be present. The error message will give you a hint on what needs to be corrected. If you need help please send us an email.

Metric Namespaces¶

Depending on the CloudWatch services you have selected, Librato will create metrics in the namespaces following the pattern:

AWS.<service-name>

Elastic Beanstalk¶

To learn how to enable the Elastic Beanstalk service in your Librato CloudWatch Integration so that you can import all of your enhanced health metrics into your Librato account and preconfigured AWS Elastic Beanstalk space read: AWS CloudWatch: Elastic Beanstalk enhanced health metrics

Custom Metrics¶

Librato is a platform designed for custom metrics. You can use any of the pre-integrated collection agents or language bindings to add metrics to Librato and then add them to your AWS service graphs or Spaces. For example you can run The Librato Agent on your AWS instances to pull in memory and other metrics that CloudWatch doesn’t provide.

You can also pull in CloudWatch custom metrics by checking the box under AWS Service in your AWS Configuration. To learn more about CloudWatch custom metrics, see Amazon’s “Publish Custom Metrics” article. Keep in mind that if you pull in CloudWatch custom metrics you will not only be charged by Amazon but also by Librato. Amazon currently charges $0.30 per custom metric per month and Librato’s cost for 5 minute metrics is $0.05 per month. As Librato was designed for custom metrics, you might consider sending the metrics directly to Librato’s RESTful API, thereby saving cost and gaining control over the metric resolution.

Reporting Intervals¶

Depending on the service, CloudWatch metrics are reported at either a 5 minute frequency or a 1 minute frequency. If you want EC2 data at a 1 minute frequency, you’ll need to enable “Detailed Monitoring” (see http://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/details). Note that ELB, RDS, ElastiCache, and some other services have 1 minute intervals by default. Using the AWS credentials you have provided, Librato will poll your CloudWatch metrics every 5 minutes and then write the resulting data into your Librato account, back-filling data that is at 1 minute resolution.

FAQ:¶